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Anyone else homebrewing?

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Mark-H

Wed Dec 21 2011, 10:44PM

Registered Member #607 Joined: Tue Mar 27 2007, 10:39AM
Location:
Posts: 64

Cheers D.E. dude. I've made mango before and had no problems. The banana is new to me, so the advice is good...
For a nice white, have you tried parsnip? Surprising the flavours you get and not the ones you expect!

Bored Chemist

Thu Dec 22 2011, 04:01PM

Registered Member #193 Joined: Fri Feb 17 2006, 07:04AM
Location: sheffield
Posts: 1022

Thanks for the reminder guys. Now filtering and bottling the damson wine.

doctor electrons

Thu Dec 22 2011, 06:53PM

Registered Member #2390 Joined: Sat Sept 26 2009, 02:04PM
Location: Milwaukee Wisconsin
Posts: 381

I have never tried parsnip. I did do a snow pea melomel and boy was it good! I bet that mango wine
will be magnificent! My latest off the wall creation is Ghost Chili wine. Tried it because everyone loves
the JalapeÃ±o wine that i make every year. The Ghost is no joke, right now its so hot that one drop is about
you can handle. (Heres a secret......) Campden tablets neutralize the cap$#%&^ AKA the hot oil in chilis'.
Every wine maker has them, or should. Its the only way i know of to reduce the heat in a hot pepper wine.
Filtering at the right level also removes some of the oil ;)

All for brew! Brew for all!!

9.50
A little more info on the amylase.
What is it? It is an enzyme that turns starch into sugar. ( If you use it during primary it will give the yeast more to convert )
I have actually filtered banana wine with a .5 micron filter to no avail.

There is a way to make a "starter" with amylase that you simply add to your carboy to remove "starch haze"
If you would like to know any more just ask, happy to help a fellow home brewer!!!

Mark-H

Thu Dec 22 2011, 10:13PM

Registered Member #607 Joined: Tue Mar 27 2007, 10:39AM
Location:
Posts: 64

Cheers DE. Half the fun is finding out what you get at the end. And believe me, I've had some awful gash!
The mango tastes more of mango than most fruit wines taste of their fruit, if that makes sense?

The Abbey beer is almost like drinking "dry chocolate" It's a cross between Leffe Brune and Kasteel in beer flavour with the hint of dark chocolate.

I also grow chillis and got a big batch of Spitfire cayenne this year. Last year I put some similar in a bottle of Everclear grain alcohol and this year it's like drinking liquid fire. It's turned the clear into a dark reddish brown colour.
Went down very well with the whisky drinkers at the drag racing tracks. :o)

I'll take on board your advise on the banana, but as of yet, it looks ok.

The other thing I've made is marrow rum...

Get a marrow, cut off one end, hollow it yout a fill it with unrefined brown sugar. Stick it in a ladys stocking, hang over a sterile bucket and forget it. Every now and again, top up the sugar. Let nature take its course.

And Whittenam cider... Not too much success with this and I've had mixed results since the 80s... Mash up a sack of (in my case) Worcester apples.
Put in fermentation bin, add unboiled water and let nature run again.
The trick is everything must be clean, clean, clean.
I've had a lot go off, but a few batches that have made me sing and one or two make me mildly ill. Dunno whether it was the 12 pints or a bad batch!

CHEERS!!! Mark.

Wolfram

Thu Dec 22 2011, 11:25PM

Registered Member #33 Joined: Sat Feb 04 2006, 01:31PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 971

Experimentonomen wrote ...

In sweden, brewing your own alcohol is illegal.

No, it isn't. In Sweden, brewing for private use is allowed.

Steve Conner

Thu Dec 22 2011, 11:59PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Good grief. You lot are brewing some quite mind-boggling concoctions. To be honest I wouldn't mind trying some of them.

I can't believe it's illegal to homebrew beer, even in Norway. But distilling your own spirits is a different matter. I remember my school chemistry teacher trying to distil what smelled like a failed batch of homebrew in the lab. :O

I'm puzzled by Glud "distilling" alcohol that's already pure. Are you just flavouring it to make absinthe?

Platinum

Fri Dec 23 2011, 12:15AM

Registered Member #3926 Joined: Fri Jun 03 2011, 08:32PM
Location: UK.
Posts: 525

I made my own nettle wine, and also hawthorn, with mountain ash berries.

Download

Fri Dec 23 2011, 03:49AM

Registered Member #561 Joined: Sat Mar 03 2007, 02:46AM
Location: Adelaide Australia
Posts: 230

Off the record, I occasionally make some nasty moonshine

GluD

Fri Dec 23 2011, 03:12PM

Registered Member #1221 Joined: Wed Jan 09 2008, 06:17PM
Location: Odense, Denmark
Posts: 196

Dr. Watt The Fork wrote ...

Good grief. You lot are brewing some quite mind-boggling concoctions. To be honest I wouldn't mind trying some of them.

I can't believe it's illegal to homebrew beer, even in Norway. But distilling your own spirits is a different matter. I remember my school chemistry teacher trying to distil what smelled like a failed batch of homebrew in the lab. :O

I'm puzzled by Glud "distilling" alcohol that's already pure. Are you just flavouring it to make absinthe?

When one is making absinth the distillition process is only to extract the delicious flavours of the herbs. If the alcholol is not sufficiently concentrated, I seem to remeber the figure 80% from some texts I read a while back, the final product will not have enough flavours dissolved and essentialy just be a mixture of ethanol and water with a very weak taste of herbs. The alcohol is acting as a solvent for the oils and other goodies from the herbs.

The distillation makes the diffrence from a good or bad absinth, cheap brands just make a mixture of essential oils from various herbs, alcohol and water. That is not a good absinth. It has to be distilled.

Typically one adds 3-5 parts of water to every part of absinth shortly before consumptions thus changing the soloubility and the mixture turns cloudy and now that is has been diluted is it more suitable for human consumption than the original 96%.

The problem with moonshiners is they dont tend to pay taxes for the the alcohol they make, I bought my 96% in a shop and thus paid the taxes there so I dont see anything wrong with that - the goverment got their money...

Another benefit from buying pure ethanol is you dont risk getting blind/dead from methanol contamination in your products. I say its a win-win.

Steve Conner

Fri Dec 23 2011, 03:35PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Well, I guess it's a bit of a geek point I'm trying to make, but 96% is the highest concentration of alcohol you can make by distillation (the azeotrope) so you're not actually distilling anything. You're just boiling the herbs in alcohol to get the flavours out.

Also if you were really distilling it, surely all the flavours would be left behind and pure alcohol would come out.

That's what I would argue if I were a lawyer anyway

Now back to the banana and chilli pepper wines.

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